This invention relates to bumper and sidewall protective strips for protecting automobiles from impact damage, and more particularly it relates to forming resilient and flexible protective strips of durable rubber that may be retrofit on curved portions of an automobile exterior surface as an add-on auxiliary protective member.
Automobile body exterior surfaces are curved, rigid and inflexible with painted and plated exterior surfaces which have a propensity for becoming scratched, indented, scarred or otherwise mutilated by impacts occurring in the course of use. In particular, side door panels are subject to denting from careless opening of car doors parked alongside, and bumpers or adjacent surfaces are often damaged by careless bumper to bumper impact when parallel parked as attempting parkers maneuver back and forth. Such impact damage may be reduced or eliminated by protective strips adhered to the exterior body surface. However, to maintain custom impact protection fittings for different automobile models as in the present state of the prior art is expensive and requires large inventories of many variations of automobile styling. Thus, it is difficult to imagine a universal styling that fits many different car models and body shapes.
One known automobile side molding configuration is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,671,974, Jun. 9, 1987 to Tatsuya Murachi for SIDE MOLD. These moldings ad deficient in several respects. For example, when attached to automobile door surfaces they present a slick, rigid impact surface which encourages sliding and attendant scratches or dents. Also their rigidity tends to transfer impacts through to the body surface or show visible damage on the moldings. Furthermore, the rigid molding configuration is not readily manufactured for attachment to curved surfaces on the exterior car body surface, such as a bumper.
It is therefore an object of this invention to provide an inexpensive universal and durable protective accessory for attachment to curved automobile exterior surfaces, which absorbs impact energy and significantly reduces or eliminates impact damage such as scratches, indents and other visible defects including damage to the exposed accessory surface.
An inexpensive impact protection accessory readily retrofit upon the exterior surfaces of an automobile without use of special tooling or external fittings matching apertures in a car body surface is provided by this invention. The accessory has a durable flexible and resilient body that conforms readily to curved exterior surfaces of an automobile. Thus, the accessory is ideal either for positioning universally on automobile bumpers, or curved door sidewalls of various car models. A rubber body provides durability, flexibility, and resilience for absorbing impact energy without residue damage or visible impairment. In a preferred embodiment the protective accessory is a strip of rubber tread obtained from the body of a discarded tire carcass. With steel belted tires, the additional advantage of internal reinforcement is inexpensively obtained. These rubber strips are secured to the external surfaces of an automobile by means of an adhesive strip overlaid by a protective film or paper exterior surface that is removed as the strip is adhered adhesively to the exterior car surface.